Milestone’s first foray into sound productions, New York Nights was not impressive.
A vehicle for silent screen icon Norma Talmadge (producer Joseph Schenck’s spouse), Milestone attempted to accommodate United Artists’ desire to blend “showbiz” and gangster genres in an adaption of “the justly forgotten” Broadway production entitled Tin Pan Alley.
Historian Joseph Millichap appraises Milestone’s effort: “New York Nights seems an obviously unimportant transitional piece. Like many early sound films it is shot from few camera settings, and it is full of static scenes in which the cast is all too obviously speaking into hidden microphones.
Milestone was so displeased with the final cut that he asked to have his name removed from the credits.”
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